Person- and situation-specific factors in discounting science via scientific impotence excuses

The scientific impotence excuse (SIE; Munro, 2010) predicts that „people resist belief-disconfirming scientific evidence by concluding that the topic of study is not amenable to scientific investigation” (p. 597)”. While the incongruence between scientific claims and individual topic-specific beliefs is indeed a central factor in discounting science, research has, up to now, neglected other factors that might lead to scientific impotence excuses. Therefore, the present work aims at extending SIE theory by investigating factors other than belief-disconfirming evidence that may contribute to the devaluation of science. As a situational factor, it will focus on the contradictoriness of the evidence presented, and, as person-specific factor, it will investigate the incongruence between the (epistemic) nature of the scientific evidence and individual epistemic beliefs (i.e., individual beliefs about knowledge). other